Sharon Van Etten began winning admirers with a pair of intimate, soul-bearing albums — 2009’s Because I Was In Love and 2010’s Epic
— that explored love gone bad via a voice that was so big and
expressive and sad-sounding that one feared for the woman from which it
was emanating.

Guitarist for The National/Cincinnati
native Aaron Dessner was one of those admirers, thus it comes as no
surprise that he agreed to help Van Etten put together her most
ambitious statement to date, Tramp, a collection of songs that
not only expands the 31-year-old singer’s sonic palette but also shows
off her evolving skills as a songwriter. Recorded over 14 months in
Dessner’s Brooklyn garage, Tramp also features multiple Indie
stalwarts (like Walkmen drummer Matt Barrick, Beirut frontdude Zach
Condon, and, of course, Dessner himself) who add texture and depth to an
album that moves from a dynamic rocker like “Serpents” to an
atmospheric slow burn like “I’m Wrong” with equal deftness.

CityBeat recently phoned Van Etten
to discuss her collaboration with Dessner, her evolution as a
songwriter and the merits of wearing lipstick.

CityBeat: How did you hook up with Aaron for this record?

Sharon Van Etten: Two years prior
to making the record I was on tour and I saw a video of The National and
Bon Iver covering one of my songs. I reached out to Aaron to see if
he’d ever want to work together, and we became close after a while. At
the time I was working on Epic and I was only just starting to
learn how to collaborate with other people. I was trying to open myself
up to people that were into my music … I was only just realizing that a
lot of the people I respect in the music world were actually listening
to my music and my friends’ music. I didn’t realize I was at the point
where people whose records I bought were listening to my music. I’m
trying to learn how to collaborate more and he was excited about the
idea.

CB: What did he bring to the process?

SVE: What I really liked about
Aaron was that he understood my music and he was a really great
interpreter.

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He helped me learn how to communicate ideas better and he’s
been in a band a lot longer, so he speaks the language in a way that I
can’t. But we also have the same style of playing — he’s self-taught and
he has a lot of heart. He’s not too mathematical about it; he’s really
intuitive.

CB: What was it like to have someone like Matt (Barrick) and Aaron help give life to your songs?

SVE: Ha. It was like a teenage dream come true. I’ve been listening to them for a really long time.

CB: You can tell almost immediately that Matt is playing drums on “Serpents.” He has such a distinctive sound and style.

SVE: I started laughing because
when I was writing that song I was like, “Oh, no, that sounds like a
National drumbeat. Aaron’s rubbing off on me too much; he’s going to
think I’m ripping him off.” I gave him the song and prefaced it by
saying, “I think I’m ripping you guys off here, but I think that’s the
beat that needs to be on this song.” He started laughing, because he was
like, “Yeah, that’s really funny, because when we use that beat we’re
ripping off The Walkmen.”

And he was like, “We should call Matt.”
That was his segue. Like, “We should call Matt and just have him do it.”
And I was like, “Oh yeah, of course, just call my old buddy Matt around
the corner.”

CB: How has your songwriting evolved over your three records?

SVE: My first record was coming
from a really, really broken place. It’s very bleak, it’s very sad, it’s
very reflective and it was coming from an overall dark place. I was
living in my parents’ basement after a terrible breakup. Writing that
record was a very healing experience for me. It gave me the strength to
move to New York. I started playing shows and I started really moving
away from that time and feeling a little more confident in who I was and
becoming more of an adult and healing.

That’s where the second record came from,
when I just started thinking about having a band and writing for a
band, so I grew in that way. The songs are still like love songs but
they’re a little more confident, stronger, and it’s not only sad songs.
After that record I toured for a while with the band for the first time
and I learned how to do that and I started playing electric guitar a lot
more often and I started writing a little more aggressively. I keep
getting more and more secure with who I am and in my writing.

With this record I feel like it’s more
reflective, learning from past experiences without having too many
negative feelings about it but allowing myself to feel. Just looking
back on the experiences and forward from them, (whereas) before I was
just so inside the moment I was writing about (how) it was hard to look
back on.

CB: The other change or
evolution I noticed was your appearance, which in the past was a pretty
low-key, jeans-and-T-shirt approach. You were relatively dolled up for
you appearance on Conan.